Familiar
by Igenlode Wordsmith
Summary: "All she could remember was the sword coming down": AU. Anna wakes to a strange place and unwelcome company.
1. Yesterday and a Lifetime Ago

**Chapter 1 — Yesterday and a Lifetime Ago **

All she could remember was the sword coming down on Elsa — Elsa, who'd never intended any of this, who'd meant no harm to anyone. The fog of cold that somehow lay between had numbed her senses until she did not know where she had been, or what urgency had driven her out onto the ice. The last vivid thing in the world had been the bright flash of steel, and Elsa's white neck bowed in yielding despair, and the impulse that had flung her between them.

Anna remembered the sword, and the agonised moment before the blade could cleave through flesh and bone. Then — nothing.

Had she died? Was this the Bishop's promised heaven? She was guiltily conscious that she'd never really paid attention to his endless sermons... but this didn't seem much like any sort of heaven. In fact — she looked around at snow, rocks and lichen, taking in her surroundings for the first time, then down at fields and forests and the great arm of the sea stretched out below — it looked very much like North Mountain. Only there were little clinging star-flowers twined amidst the cracks in the cliff, and the treetops far beneath bore no burden of white. North Mountain in the summer, then, where she had never been.

It was still cold. She let fall the arm she had instinctively flung up to ward off the coming blow and drew the thick wool of her cloak more closely round her, shivering. How had she climbed this high? Had Kristoff—

_Kristoff_. Memory came flooding back and she doubled over, pressing both hands into the pit of her stomach with a sob. She had been out on the ice looking for Kristoff, because her true love— because _Hans_ had cast her aside and left her to die for what she really was: a stupid little girl with a head full of dreams, who knew nothing about love, or men, or whom she could trust and whom it was that smiled and laughed and lied and lied...

It had been Hans with the sword; Hans, who had told her he would kill Elsa and end the winter. And she had been searching desperately for Kristoff in the hopes that he could break the curse that was killing her before it was too late. She had been numb, so numb, barely able to stumble one foot in front of another, but she had heard Kristoff calling and thought that she saw him. There might still have been time... but then she had heard the blade clear its sheath, and turned to see Elsa.

Anna hadn't even known Elsa was out there in the storm with her. Elsa didn't mind the cold, of course. Maybe she'd even made the snowstorm herself, the way she'd made all Arendelle's other odd weather... but there hadn't been any storm in that moment, not any more. Only Elsa kneeling on the ice, unresisting, with her head bent for the executioner's stroke.

Strength Anna hadn't known she still possessed had carried her far enough to hurl herself between the sister she loved and the man who had betrayed them both. The burning outrage of that instant was the last thing she remembered clearly. After that... after that, she supposed, the sword had come down. Not on Elsa, but on Anna's upraised arm.

She straightened slowly, uncurling the fingers that had been clenched into a fist. Somehow she had half expected to see blood trickling across her wrist, despite the lack of pain. But the palm she turned up to the sunlight was small and pink and unhurt, and she did not seem to be injured anywhere. What _had_ happened? Was she a ghost, like the lost spirits the waiting-women had whispered about in corners when she was little?

She kicked one booted foot against a rock experimentally, and winced. As far as she knew, ghosts didn't get stubbed toes... and rolling up one sleeve revealed that she still had a full crop of freckles, which she was pretty sure ghosts didn't get either.

Anna sighed, and sat back on her heels. "This makes no sense," she said out loud, addressing the black speck of a buzzard hovering a hundred feet above.

"Yes, I did wonder exactly how confused you'd be if you woke up." The voice was elderly, amused, and came from directly behind her.

Anna jumped to her feet, whirling round. Seated snugly in a crevice of the rocks, one elegantly-clad knee crossed over the other and very much at his ease, an old man with a neatly-pointed white beard and moustaches was observing her with an air of detached curiosity as if she were a particularly fascinating specimen.

She raised her chin a little under that scrutiny, and folded her arms. "All right, this isn't funny. How did I get here, what's going on, and"—as the meaning of what she had just heard caught up with her—"just what did you mean by _if_ I woke up?"

The old gentleman rose a little stiffly, leaning on an ebony-handled cane, and came towards her. He was spry but bent with age, and his eyes were very bright and oddly familiar.

"You see, no-one really knew what would happen. The general feeling was that you'd simply melt."

"_Melt?_" It squeaked upwards into horror, and she got a sharp look in response.

"Do you really not remember? Your sister put a curse of ice on your heart, and you were dying. Only you didn't just freeze to death. Her powers turned you into a sculpture of solid ice."

Anna stared back at him, then down at her hands, remembering how frost crystals had begun to creep across her flesh, and caught her breath in a gasp. "So when I—"

"When you flung yourself heroically in front of Queen Elsa"—the words held a sardonic edge—"you were already almost gone. An instant later you'd transformed to ice on the spot: hard, unyielding, and cold enough to shatter steel. You'd saved your sister's life, and she was wild with grief, but there was nothing to be done."

He shifted his weight, leaning more heavily on his cane.

"I didn't gather what happened to you next until after I'd been turned unceremoniously out of the kingdom." This time, his tone was very dry. "But I heard the Queen had your statue brought up here to her ice-palace on the mountain, where it wouldn't melt in the summer heat. Oh yes, she brought back the summer after your death, something to do with tears melting snow, they told me, and the whole kingdom rallied round poor bereaved Elsa who'd been so grievously wronged. Nothing could bring you back, though, no matter how she tried. There you were, a symbol of sacrifice up on the mountain, preserved in ice, a girl who'd barely ever really lived at all. Despite all the indignities of my exit from Arendelle, I admit it crossed my mind from time to time to think of you, and wonder what would become of you... when the magic wore off."

A sweeping gesture all around took in the snow-covered shoulder of rock on which they stood, and the ravine that had once been bridged by a soaring staircase of ice. The palace Elsa had once conjured up on this very spot had vanished as though it had never been.

A little shakily, Anna looked from chasm to cliff, recognising at last just where she was. There had been a great hall here, made from a delicate filigree of frost... and for a moment she could picture herself poised amid the pillars, a crystalline shape as frozen as all the rest. She shivered, pinching herself hard beneath the cloak to feel the reassurance of bruised flesh.

"So, since my banishment was conveniently at an end," her companion was continuing, apparently unabashed by that admission, "I thought I might slip into the country and pay you a visit, just to find out. To pay my courtesies for old times' sake, if you like."

He swept her a low bow with a bright edge of malice, sprightly despite his years, and Anna frowned. Despite everything, he did seem oddly familiar. Just who was this old rogue, and what did he think he was up to? Something in the way he moved; they'd danced together, she thought they had danced...

She caught at a memory from the ballroom's haze. "You're the Duke of Weaseltown, aren't you? Why isn't my sister here? Where's Elsa?"

For a moment she saw him actually taken aback. Then he began to laugh. "Oh, Anna..."

"How dare you?"

"We've been on first name terms for a while, Anna. Longer than you think."

He'd been tall, once. She still had to look up into his eyes when he straightened from the cane. And there was something in that gaze that caught at her with heart-wrenching recognition.

"The late unlamented Duke Wilfrid of Wesselton-it's-pronounced-Wesselton suffered an apoplexy a few months after his return from Arendelle. His heir has grandchildren. And Queen Elsa took to her bed a week ago, and passed away peacefully of old age, and all her magic with her. Hence—" One hand indicated Anna herself from head to toe. "It took Elsa's death to break the spell. And with her gone, there's no-one else left to remember the lost princess, no-one else who really knew you — but me."

He laughed again, but this time it came out as more of a wheeze. "But then what we shared was always rather _special_, wasn't it? Do you know something crazy?"

And for a moment the tilt of his head was exactly the same as— No. Oh no, no, _no_...

Anna swallowed, caught between horror and disbelief. It was a trick; another wicked, heartless trick.

"Do you know something crazy?" Hans said. He bent closer, and beneath the grotesque, impossible distortion of age his grin was unchanged. "It's been almost sixty years since you accepted my proposal. Do you think that's some kind of record for a royal engagement?"

Anna cried out and stumbled backwards, hands flung up as if to ward him off. "I don't believe you. It's not true!"

But it was Hans, Hans shrunken and withered as if by nightmare, with his red hair faded to a yellowed white, and with all the tetchy mannerisms of old age, but she could not un-see the likeness however hard she tried. Whatever had happened to him — however much he'd outwardly changed — this was the same man who'd spurned her first love and left her for dead. The man she'd last seen trying to kill her sister.

He was a liar. She couldn't trust anything he said. Maybe — she clutched at straws — maybe it was the trolls who had done this to him. Perhaps it was his punishment.

Hans had made no attempt to pursue her. He simply stood there, leaning a little on his cane, with an air of weary tolerance that frightened her more than any swagger or threats. If this were true, if he were as old as he seemed...

"Take a look below," Hans said quietly. "A good long look. Is that the Arendelle you knew? The castle's bigger, and so are the ships in the harbour. The docks where we met have gone. Sigurd II rules down there now: Elsa's eldest, a big solid fellow with a square beard and the beginnings of a belly. From what I hear, he sowed a few wild oats with his brothers when they were young, gave their mother a grey hair or two, but the people loved their Crown Prince and by all accounts he's steady enough now."

"Wait." Anna caught her breath, her head spinning. There were chimneys below that should not be there, and a new bridge and a ribbon of road running out around the point where the fishermen used to dry their nets, and the harbour was all _wrong_... She had begun to feel sick. "Wait — I've got _nephews_?"

A chuckle in response. "Anna"—his tone was patient, almost kind—"your eldest great-niece got married last year."

Elsa, a grandmother. Elsa old. Elsa dead... Tears welled up in her eyes, and she could barely take in what he was saying.

"...a whole parcel of pretty fair-haired girls, and not a redhead amongst them. Our children, now, that would have been a different story. I can just see it: as fine a collection of coppernobs as you could ever wish for, and not one of them jeered at for a turned-up nose or being ginger." It was almost wistful, and nausea rose in her throat as he grinned. "Trust their proud papa to make sure of that."

"Get _away_ from me!"

Anna scrabbled for footing in a panic, lost her balance and sat down hard in the snow. Hans surveyed her without a word, and she could feel herself going pink in the way she'd always hated that clashed horribly with her hair. He made no move to offer her a hand as she clambered to her feet, and even though the last thing she wanted was for him to lay a finger on her, even though he looked frail enough that an attempt would have left them both sprawling, the fact that he'd failed to make the gesture still — ridiculously — hurt.

She would not let him see her cry. She would not. Anna made a vain attempt at brushing the snow from her skirts, and folded her arms.

"So what are you doing here, _Prince Hans_?"

"Actually"—he coughed, and one hand came up to stroke the point of his beard—"it's Count Kalloukratis these days. A minor title, but my own, and honestly... bought."

"Fine." He was obviously waiting for her to ask. Well, he could just wait. "So what are you doing here, then, my lord Count... and not in jail, where someone like you belongs? They should have locked you up for life for what you did—"

"Tried to do." He forestalled her with a raised finger. "Obviously it was awkward when you made your impromptu appearance after everyone had been assured you were already dead — exactly how did you manage that, by the way?"

"Some of us have real friends," Anna said coldly. "Go on."

Hans shrugged in what might almost have been apology. "Well, it was awkward, clearly, especially when that little snowman of yours started talking about how you'd made a mistake over the whole 'true love' business—"

"_I_ made a mistake?"

"—but when the Queen had just turned her own sister to ice in front of a balcony full of witnesses, there was a certain amount of sympathy for a misguided 'execute Elsa to end the winter' approach. Especially when it came to the heart-broken husband-to-be."

"I don't believe you even have a heart." The words slipped out before she could stop them, with a shameful wobble that made her sound about fourteen; but how dared, how _dared_ he stand there and recount the whole thing as if it were some distant youthful escapade? Even if this horrible thing were true and she'd lost her whole life to Elsa's ice, that didn't mean he could brush off what he'd done, not when for her it was still so very real.

To her horror she found she was being offered a handkerchief. She snatched it, defiantly blew her nose, and glared.

"As I was saying," Hans continued with weary emphasis, "they let me go. There wasn't a lot of evidence with the principal witness turned to ice, after all. The next thing I knew, I'd been banished from Arendelle for the lifetime of Queen Elsa, on pain of death." Another shrug. "So I went elsewhere."

"And found some other poor girl, I suppose." It was an interjection he chose to ignore.

"I went south. It didn't work out." His face hardened for a moment, and beneath the finicking airs of the Count she caught a glimpse of the landless young prince who'd let ambition drive him beyond the pale. The bitterness deepened. "I wound up spending the next fifteen years in jail as a consequence of a political conspiracy I hadn't —as chance would have it— played any part in. I had plenty of time to meditate on the irony of cosmic justice; the first six years were in solitary. I nearly lost my mind."

Anna gasped. "Hans..."

She bit her lip. 'Locked up for life', she'd said, and she'd meant it, hadn't she ? She'd wanted to see him punished. But she hadn't faced what that would actually be _like_.

"For the second half I had a... cellmate, an old philosopher-priest. Indefinite imprisonment for something you haven't done is conducive to philosophy, and under his tuition I had a lot of time to think. Long years later, after his death, I was finally able to escape. He'd held the secret of an old treasure-map he'd never been able to use; I possessed myself of the money, and with it purchased the position and the security I'd always dreamed of." He sighed and shifted his weight again. "Kalloukratis was a rocky little island like the ones at home, with scrawny trees clinging to the crags and a clamour of seabirds on cliffs where nothing could grow, but it was mine, honestly and undisputed. That meant something, after what I'd learned with the priest. And there was a certain beautiful black-haired princess in exile who was only too eager to share it with me, in the end."

His eyes softened, looking back. "She had no kingdom left and not a penny to her name, but that didn't matter. Not any more."

Dawning sympathy died a small ignoble death. "And now I suppose the grieving widower has decided to turn up for a second bite at the cherry," Anna snapped. "Not even you could think that was going to work. In case you hadn't noticed, my lord Count, you're not quite the figure of a man you used to be. I think I can promise you one princess who isn't going to fall for your charms."

She swung round, turning her back on him, and pulled her cloak about her more tightly, staring down at Arendelle spread out beneath her amid the sparkling sea. He'd ended up with everything he'd ever wanted, and he'd deserved none of it. He'd had _forty years_ of happy ending, while she—

A sigh from behind her. "Anna..."

And he had no right to heave reproving sighs at her like some schoolmaster just because he'd got old when she wasn't looking.

"I'm not Anna to you, and I'll never be that Anna again. I wouldn't trust you an inch further than I could throw you. Now just go away."

"Your Highness has other plans for the day, no doubt."

Honesty from an aged Hans hurt. But that edge of silken mockery was something she could handle.

She clenched her fists beneath the cloak. "Just. Go. Away."

After a long time, when the halting sound of his footsteps had finally gone, she let herself take a cautious look. She was alone in the snow.


	2. Tomorrow for Amends

**Chapter 2 — Tomorrow for Amends **

She stood alone. Alone and high up on the side of North Mountain, in an Arendelle where great black ships moved on the sea and a long bridge lay like a collar across the fjord and chimneys rose in places they should not... and where no-one knew her, or had cared enough to come.

Had Elsa come up here, year after year, in search of solitude? Had she set her arms around her sister's ice-cold form and whispered her sorrows into ears that could not hear? Had she knelt and begged Anna to answer, just once, to give her some sign, some hope, some chance to make all right again? Had she known that only her death could set Anna free, and that the long years held them hopelessly apart?

The lost princess, Hans had called her; the girl who had never really lived. Anna's eyes filled and blurred despite herself. She'd never had anyone. She'd spent her whole life shut away with a handful of aging servants, dreaming of the world beyond the gates while her sister held her at arm's-length. And when for the first time in forever she'd thought she could have it all — happiness with Hans, real friendship with Elsa, love and laughter and excitement and adventure with all Arendelle opening up before her — it had all been snatched away. Hans had only ever wanted power. Elsa had turned away from her and then struck her with ice, even if she hadn't meant to. There was no-one and nothing for her down there, only Elsa's great hulking sons who hadn't cared enough about some old myth to see if it might possibly be true, or if some lost princess who meant nothing to them might just be alive after all, or if she might need _help_...

Anna sniffed, hard, found she was still clutching the handkerchief Hans had bestowed on her, and used it with reluctance to mop her nose. But the tears kept coming.

Kristoff — Kristoff would have helped her. But ice-harvesting was a young man's game. He would be an ancient cottager now, sitting doddering in the corner of his daughter's or grand-daughter's cabin with a fire in the stove to warm his bones, and maybe one of Sven's antlers mounted on the logs of the wall for memory's sake... and that was if she was lucky. Anna bit her lip. Few men even in the aristocracy lived that long. Chances were, Kristoff was dead and gone. Like everything else.

In front of her Elsa's ice bridge had once sprung across a great ravine. Now there was nothing but the bare rock, falling away into a dark cleft slippery with summer snow-melt. Anna went closer to look down over the edge, but even through the blur of tears she knew she'd never be able to climb across that way, not even if Kristoff had been there with his rope. Somewhere far below she could hear a trickle of water, and her head swam.

She thought of Kristoff again, and the moment they'd gone over the cliff together. The fall had been over so quickly there had been no time to be afraid, only a long rush of movement in mid-air. And here there was no twenty-foot drift of snow. She leaned out for a better view. It would be so easy...

"Anna, no!" The shout was cracked with age, but it held an edge of habitual command that had her backing away from the edge almost before she'd registered his presence. She glared at Hans, who'd reappeared around the corner, and he returned the glare, looking considerably less dapper and self-possessed than the elderly gentleman who'd been seated calmly on a boulder when she woke. His overcoat was unbuttoned, the clothes beneath were spattered with snow, and he was breathing heavily in his haste, his face suffused as if on the point of apoplexy.

"I thought you'd end up doing something stupid"—his tone was withering—"but not _that_ stupid."

Anna could feel her own cheeks hot with humiliation. Her knees were shaking now at the knowledge of just how close she'd been. "I don't see that what I do is any of your business."

Hans hobbled forward and collapsed onto a convenient rock, a hand pressed to his chest. "Clearly my mistake," he retorted coldly, "as I was under the impression you were attempting to do away with yourself."

"Why would you care?" She hadn't asked him to come rushing back up the mountain. Nobody had asked him to poke his nose into her existence at all. "You got married to someone else, remember? That generally puts an end to an attachment — and so does leaving your bride for dead!"

She hadn't expected him to pretend he was sorry. She hadn't expected to get a testy look in response, either.

After a moment he turned aside. "Would you believe me," he enquired, inspecting his cuffs with undue attention, "if I told you I happen to dislike unnecessary... waste?"

"No." Anna's voice was flat. "So why don't you tell me exactly what you think you're up to and what you're after — Count Kalloukratis?"

Hans sighed.

"As it happens, I came to make you an offer." He held up a hand to forestall her. "_Not_ that sort of offer... Listen. I told you I had a lot of time to think things over in all those years of imprisonment. To learn what I could from the old priest, and talk the world over together. When he died, I resolved for once and all that if I got free, I'd find some way to make use of my talents. Finding a fortune just made that easier."

He grinned a little. "It makes most things easier... Well, I'd lost my youth but not my skill at playing a part, and it seemed to me there were plenty of rogues in the world as bad as I was, or worse, and no-one else so well-placed to turn the tables. So I began to meddle discreetly in other people's business. It's amazing how many flawless schemes can go awry with a little push behind the scenes from someone as unprincipled as the perpetrator. There was a challenge to it, and a satisfaction I hadn't expected to find in arranging matters for the minnows to bite back against the pike. And they can be so very grateful."

Above the neat pointed beard, his smile twisted into ruefulness at his own expense. "There's a... poignancy, of a sort, in finding oneself the object of entirely unmerited admiration."

She wanted to believe it was a lie, and found she could not. The whole thing was twisted enough for the Hans she knew — and, though it was hard to admit it, this was not, any more, altogether the Hans she knew. Anna surveyed him. "Are you seriously asking me to believe that you've been spending your time as some kind of masked avenger of the innocent?"

"So far as it amuses me, yes." Hans smoothed his hands down across his waistcoat and rose, a little stiffly. "And the proposition I had in mind was that you should join me."

She opened her mouth. Shut it again. Caught her breath, and for a moment found she could do nothing but stare.

"Join you — how? As what? Why me? And why on _earth_ would I trust you ever again?"

"That's simple." And the smile he gave her this time was the one she remembered from their first evening together, open and dancing with just a hint of shared mischief. "You don't trust me, of course. It'll be good practice."

He came towards her and halted an instant before she would have backed away, planting his stick firmly in the snow and leaning on it with both hands. "Listen. What I need is someone with a face people _will_ trust. A girl. Young and patently honest. Someone with no history and no past that can be traced back. No family ties that can be used against her, and nothing to lose." A cough shook him, and he paused to recover his breath. "I'm looking for an assistant, Anna. I can't promise you long"—a brief gesture at his own shrunken limbs—"but while it lasts I can guarantee it will never be dull. You'll travel in luxury, and move unseen among kings and beggars alike. You'll never play the same part twice. And you won't be deceiving anyone who doesn't richly deserve it."

"Hold on a minute." Anna looked at him in disbelief. "Did you come all the way up here with some bizarre notion that you could beg me to leave the only home I've ever known, abandon Arendelle and go off around the world with someone I don't like or trust to places I've never even heard of, pretending to be someone I'm not?"

"No, of course not," Hans snapped. "I came up on the off-chance you might be here, to hold out the _golden opportunity_ to do just that. Now tell me I was wrong."

Down below her was an Arendelle that might as well have been a foreign country, and a family she had never met in whose eyes she would be little better than a revenant from the grave. All she could see now, as she looked out, was a land of lost chances and memories that hurt. She shook her head.

"You're right." It was almost inaudible. "I want to leave."

Hans said nothing, but when she looked back at him he had held out one hand. After a final instant of hesitation, Anna laid her hand in his.

She didn't know quite what, in the back of her mind, she'd expected: maybe a vulture's claw? But his fingers around hers were aged but firm and warm and just like anyone else. She might even forget in time, she thought, that she'd last seen that hand clasped on a sword-hilt, coming down.

"And now that's settled," Hans was saying, turning briskly on his heel and tugging her after him, "we need to get moving. I've a hundred-ton yacht moored just off the coast to the north of here that will take us straight to Kalloukratis without any awkward encounters with harbour officials or customs men, and once we're home you can start to get up to scratch with what you'll need to know about the modern world. Some new clothes and—"

_"Home?"_ Anna had stopped dead, yanking herself free. There was an unpleasant sensation in the pit of her stomach.

"Naturally. Oh, you've no need to stare at me like a frightened rabbit; you'll be in excellent hands with Haydee, I assure you. She's been growing quite motherly in her old age. She'll be delighted to take very good care of you."

Her world was whirling abruptly around her all over again. "Haydee?"

Hans raised an eyebrow. "Your hostess, the lovely Haydee. Not quite so raven-haired as she used to be, I'll admit, but forever and always"— he swept a bow in reverence to an unseen lady—"my wife."

"You—" Anna choked, overcome by twin competing desires to hit him and to laugh. "How dared you let me think you were a widower on the make?"

"I never said anything of the sort," Hans observed, with undeniable — and infuriating — accuracy. The creases of amusement around his eyes were completely impenitent, and this time, she told herself, this time she really would have hit him, if she hadn't doubted she'd ever be able to get him up on his feet again afterwards.

Instead she found herself picking her way cautiously after the Count across the snowfield, as he led off around the slopes on the far side of the mountain, where he'd apparently left his supplies. It was easier going than the steep rock faces she'd left behind, and the vista unfolding beneath her stretched out over wide fjords and forested slopes in a part of the country she'd never seen before, but she had little enough time to admire the scenery. Hans with his cane was surprisingly nimble on the slope, and it wasn't long before she was wishing for an ice-axe like the ones in Oaken's store to use as a stick of her own in places where a third leg would have come in handy. It came as a relief when he paused, breathing heavily, on the brink of a steep gully, ostensibly to admire the view.

"Hans." The name and its memories still felt wrong in her mouth, but she really couldn't go on calling him 'My Lord Count' forever. "Just how did you manage to get these supplies of yours all the way up here in the first place? And how did you know there was this back route, anyway? I can't even see the harbour from here."

"You really want to know?" For the first time that day — for the first time since he'd thrown her aside and shown her the true face of what he was — she couldn't detect even a hint of mockery when he glanced round at her, and that look in his eyes told her with a lurch that maybe she really didn't want to know.

But it was too late. He'd taken her arm to guide her a step or two further round the corner, where a cache of crates and canvas had been set up under a rocky overhang. Near it in the snow were a small sledge, its runners half-buried in the crust, a few twigs of brushwood, some coal and... a withered carrot.

"Olaf!" Anna went down on her knees beside the poor scattered remnants, her eyes filling with tears. It was stupid, she knew; if she'd thought about it she'd have assumed the little snowman would have vanished long ago already. But he'd lasted this long, and then melted... along with everything else Elsa's magic had sustained.

She looked up at Hans, managing a tremulous smile. "So he didn't die when the magical winter ended — he saw summer after all?"

Hans shrugged. "I wasn't there, remember? I don't pretend to know how your sister's sorcery works. All I know is that he found me somehow and wanted to help. Help you, that is. I didn't know what to make of it... but the Queen was already dead by that point, and all her old magic was starting to crumble. When we first got this far, you could still see what was left of Elsa's ice palace up beyond that shoulder."

He indicated the corner of the mountain they'd just been skirting. "He lasted just long enough to set sight on that, and an hour later there was nothing left of him at all. He knew that if you thawed out then so would he, of course, but he was quite convinced in what passed for his mind that you would come back. That was something worth melting for, he said. Kept babbling about it all the way up; that little creature was the only one in Arendelle, myself included, who was really certain you were still alive up here... and that you'd need help."

Pulling free the canvas, he had begun to pack everything back on the sledge. Anna caught a final disgruntled mutter, directed downwards, to the effect that some people needed about as much help as a cat in a tree, and found herself nursing a sudden grin. "Did he offer you warm hugs?"

_"What?"_ She couldn't see his face; but the way he shot bolt upright — with a hiss of breath and a hand clapped to the small of his back a moment later — was more than enough reward. A giggle escaped her despite everything, and she got a growl in return. "Here — catch."

Something dark came flying towards her, and Anna got her hands up just in time to field what proved to be a coil of rope. An ice-axe followed, sent skittering across the snow, and a small hamper that Hans hefted with a grunt and Anna, her hands full, didn't even attempt to retrieve when it fell short between them.

"Food." He was working to fasten up the remainder of the load, wrestling with half-frozen cordage and recalcitrant straps, and it came out in a series of jerks between gritted teeth. "Open it. If you're... not hungry... I am."

She was, she discovered, very hungry indeed. A good deal of the food in the hamper had clearly already been eaten, but fortunately whoever had done the provisioning had packed with a generous hand. Presently the two of them were seated atop the neatly-packed sledge, dining royally — and in Anna's case at least — ravenously — on what remained of the lavish refreshments laid in for the expedition.

It was hard to remember that you hated and distrusted someone when you were sitting side by side, sharing a cold venison pasty. Particularly when you came to hand it back and discovered you'd somehow devoured almost all of it. Anna wasn't sure she'd ever felt so friendly towards Hans as in that moment when he simply regarded her from under one wiry white brow and reached down to pass her another pasty.

She could get to like this version of Hans quite easily, if she wasn't careful. Not the way she'd _liked_ him the first time round, obviously — that would just be weird — and she wouldn't be entrusting him with any more kingdoms in a hurry, word of honour or not, but this version was at least honestly dishonest, so to speak. And maybe, after a while, she'd even be able to remember that morning they'd bumped into each other down on the docks without it hurting so much. It was just that she couldn't help wondering what he was up to.

"Listen, Hans... ooh, wait, is that a jar of pickled damsons?"

Hans sighed, but opened the jar. "You cannot possibly expect me to believe you're still hungry, not even after sixty years... Well?"

"Well what?" She was trying to extract the fruit without dripping sweet, sticky juice all over everything. There were already purple stains in the snow.

Another sigh as he reached for his cane in order to rise. "Do I take it that 'Listen, Hans' was intended as a prelude to something more than 'please pass the damsons'?"

"Oh yes, well, about that—" She wiped her mouth hastily on the back of her hand and scrambled to her feet in turn. "Don't get me wrong, but... you've gone to a lot of trouble over this. Here we are, halfway up a mountain, when there must be other girls out there who'd be as much use or more in your schemes as I would. So I can't help asking myself, just what's in it for you?"

And if he dared to say he'd been feeling some kind of pity for her, then she really was going to push him into a snowdrift.

"Vulgar curiosity." From his grin, he was clearly not in the least discomfited. "There's not many girls you can say you've shattered a sword on... I _knew_ the stories about you were no myth, you see. I'd witnessed the beginning of the spell in memorable fashion, and I found I had a certain desire, after all, to see how it would end. I wanted to know what would happen. And if it worked out, well — I can always use an assistant who's ready to scramble up roofs."

"And out of windows," Anna added, with a pointed glare, and watched him absorb the implications without a flicker.

"And out of windows. And other crazy places." It was acknowledgement and invitation in one, and despite herself she felt her heart lift at the promise of adventure.

"I was in jail a long time, Anna. And I believe I told you"—the hesitation this time was almost imperceptible, but his gaze had dropped for an instant—"I don't care for waste." The admission was unspoken, but they both heard it.

"Crazy will do. I'll take crazy," Anna said quietly, and waited for the murmur to come in response.

"I love crazy."

It was the closest he would ever come, she thought, to making amends.

"Well, then." She shook snow briskly from the hem of her cloak, surveying the landscape laid out before her, where cloud-shadows like wind in long grass chased across the flanks of the mountain. "Shall we make a start? Which way is it?"

A glance back at him, and her jaw dropped. "Oh no. You don't seriously... I am not going to harness myself to your sledge. What do you take me for — a reindeer, or something?"

"An assistant," Hans snapped, still holding out the hauling-straps rigged at the front of the sledge. "It's not all glamour and disguises, you know. Do you imagine I'm going to haul loads if I don't have to, at my time of life?"

And she had to admit there was some reason in what he said.

Just pretend he's a poor old woodcutter, she told herself, settling the ropes resentfully about her shoulders and leaning forward to test the strain. Poor old grandpa needs my help...

It wasn't too bad, actually. In fact — when the downward route turned out to include the steep gully they'd passed previously — it was more a question of picking their way gingerly down while holding the sledge back at every step as it tried to get away from her. Hans had his ice-axe out and a rope belayed around his waist, she noticed, but there was no way she was going to trust their joint safety to a man of over eighty.

"This is ridiculous." It wasn't as if they'd even got very far. If she looked back the right way, she was almost certain she could still glimpse purple splashes on the side of the snowdrift above. "I've got a better idea."

Below her the gully swept on downwards, a white untouched path between rough ribs of rock that petered out at last on the lower slopes, where bare scree took over. Anna jammed a stone under the front runner and paused to rest aching shoulders. Conscience — she had taken on a certain responsibility, after all — drove a quick check to make sure Hans hadn't actually fixed his rope onto the sledge. Then she shrugged free of the shoulder-loops, gripping one firmly in either hand, and seated herself squarely on the front of the load. Without letting herself think, she leaned forward, tweaked out the stone she'd wedged in position, and kicked off. "See you at the bottom!"

The sledge shot forward, gathering speed. It was steeper than she'd thought. Faster than she'd thought. The gully walls loomed abruptly and she leaned into a frantic swerve. Again, in a long swooping curve that carved a shower of ice-crystals from the crust. Rocks flashed past as she fought to steer a straight course. The thrumming of the iron runners ran through her in a long thrill that was half terror and half sheer exhilaration.

In the next instant the sledge hit a bump, tilted wildly, and came back down with a bone-rattling crash. Already the scree below was rushing up towards her at breakneck speed. Stop — somehow she had to stop.

There was a soft drift ahead at the mouth of a side-gully. Anna bit her lip and flung her weight across desperately, struggling to steer. For a second or two she could see herself shooting past, faster and faster, all the way down and out over the lip of the gully. Then her frantic attempts bore fruit. The sledge veered right, dug its nose into loose snow, and sent her flying head-first into the drift.

Arms flailing, she surfaced, dizzy with breathless laughter. "Oof. That was... quite something."

She'd made it about halfway down the steep descent. Down below, patches of rock and thin turf had begun to spread and join with the coming of summer, until at the edge of the snowline only a few shaded hollows still showed white. Above her she could see Hans, leaning on the handle of his axe and waiting with an air of infinite patience. He gave no indication whatsoever of being about to attempt a solitary arduous clamber in her wake.

Surely he didn't expect—

Anna folded her arms and watched him in her turn, waiting to see who would be the first to crack. She had the sledge and the supplies, after all. There was nothing preventing her from going off on her own and just leaving him up there. She could try to find the trolls. Maybe Kristoff had left _troll_ grandchildren. The thought brought a giggle, but stranger things had happened.

She certainly wasn't going to go back up there to assist a stubborn old man who'd climbed a mountain with Olaf's help for her benefit. Of course not... With a sigh, she began groping around for the ice-axe he'd provided her, finding it roped neatly on again behind the stores.

He'd told her not to trust him, or anyone else. He'd walked out on her the moment it suited him, and maybe that was sixty years in his past, but to her it was only yesterday. She couldn't think of anyone more deserving of a dose of his own medicine. But she was going back for him anyway, because she was better than he was... and besides, she wanted to have another go at that run down the gully.

There was room for two on the sledge.


End file.
